Most institutions for children fail. All are constrained by the quality of personnel available, fiscal limits, and inadequate access to specific, applicable information about programs that work. The objectives of this project are to assemble specific operational material on effective institutional care, develop a small task force to carry it into a failing children's institution and assess the effect. The changes in institutional operation are intended to occur without increases in budget and without the substitution of current, unsuccessful staff. Results are to be evaluated along selected aspects of physical growth, cognitive development, psycho-social maturity, acquisition of values and skills. The experimental group will be compared against itself, against residents in a similar institution located some 75 km away and against non-institutional slum and middle class populations.